It all started in Nipton
by RosiePosie91
Summary: An adventure starting in Nipton.
1. Chapter 1

All she'd wanted was a drink, a mother fucking drink. A Sunset Sarsaparilla, a Nuka Cola, a wine, beer, hell even some clean water would have been awesome. Maybe add to that a quick trade to get rid of some of that damn scrap she'd been lugging around, a little nap somewhere out of the burning sun, and things would have been just superb. What she hadn't planned on was her lunch date being interrupted by a bunch of Legion fuck heads so that she could become part of the idea of entertainment. She had been so excited to see the Nipton Sign, now she wished that she had run. She should have run as fast as she could, until her feet bled and then run some more.

Hindsight however was a wonderful thing.

In reality she'd waltzed on into the town to carelessly, stupidly assuming that she'd be welcome, and that it would be safe - or at least as safe as anywhere in this god forsaken wasteland, ready to go about her business, when she'd been grabbed and herded along with all of the rest. Now she knelt shoulder to shoulder with a group of other women, her knees throbbing on the hard wood floor, clutching her small, golden piece of paper – her lottery ticket, frozen in fear as she watched the man in front of them pull out numbers.

It wasn't the numbers that scared her. Numbers are just numbers. What's a number going to do to you? Nothing, obviously. However the group of legionaries standing to one side of the room, they were fucking scary. They were like dogs waiting for their prey. Waiting to hurt you. Wanting to hurt you. They didn't have to wait long either. Every time the man at the front called a number, the legionaries were waiting to take the corresponding person away. They weren't taking people out of the room to let them go either. The knot in her stomach grew tighter. She could hear the screams. Hear the crackle of the fires. She was one side of total, blind panic. She could die here, and nobody would ever know who she was, nobody would care, she'd just be another faceless corpse.

"59"

Another number was read out. This time a small child, with a mass of blond curls, in a ragged prewar dress was led away from her mother and out of the room. The child looked to be barely out of nappies, yet she went silently with the legionary. Her mother never blinked, never looked away from the man with the numbers. Didn't make any sort of reaction to her child being led to what could be her death, and that was if she was lucky.

A tear ran down the Couriers dirty cheek, but quickly dried in the stuffy hot room. She didn't know if she was a religious woman, but as she knelt on the floor in wait, she prayed. What else can you do when you run out of options? She prayed for the little girl, she prayed for herself, she made all sorts of bargains with every higher power she could imagine, asking to go back in time. Just far enough back to have never walked into this god-forsaken place. Far enough back that she'd never have to hear that number.

"Six"

Fuck. It was over.


	2. Chapter 2

"Six"

Shaking like a leaf she got to her feet. If a child could do it without complaining, so could she. She followed the legionaries out of the room, down the stairs and finally out of the front door. The wind slapped her face as she took in the mess that had been made of Nipton.

People she'd been sat next to only minutes earlier were nailed to old phone poles, screaming, crying and begging for mercy. Begging to be allowed to die. The noise was overpowering to Six's ears. The scene in front of her was so horrific that she couldn't believe that it was happening.

A pile of bodies lay off to her right. They were the lucky ones to escape the crucifixion. Crumpled and broken, but dead, unable to hurt anymore. She thought that she might have seen a head full of blonde curls in amongst it, but she quickly looked away. Sometimes it's better to not be able to answer every question.

A pale skinned man with dark hair walked up to her, his Legion uniform much nicer than the others.

"Congratulations, you degenerate whore..."

The legionaries roughly fastened a collar around her neck.

"…you just won third place."

Six's hands were quickly bound, and she again found herself shoulder to shoulder with several other women. She quickly noticed that "third place" had been allocated by looks and age not rather than luck, as all the other "third placers" of which there was a handful, were also women no older than their mid twenties, slim, and pretty. Six wasn't too sure how she had made the cut, given the still new scar on her forehead, but she wasn't complaining for now. At least she wasn't hanging on the crucifix, not knowing what would happen first, a hawk eating her eye balls from her not quite dead skull or her chest ripping open from the strain, then dying from blood loss. This town stood a statement to the cruelty of the Legion, a warning for those who dared to cross them or just cross paths with them.

A young , heavily pregnant woman was dragged from the building in hysterics, and forced to watch as a man (Six assumed her husband, but in reality could have also been a brother or friend) was nailed to the telephone pole. The woman struggled to get away, biting her captors, screaming to the man, with tears streaming down her face. It was a horrendous scene, made worse as she was dragged to the foot of the crucifix where her throat was slit and she was left to bleed out, only feet away from her dying loved one.

The woman next to Six buried her face in Six's dirty blonde hair, and clutched at her arm, shaking and sobbing quietly. Unable to hug her as her hands were bound, Six just stood there, letting the woman cry it out, and although she was sorely tempted, didn't join her in her melt down. Six had already died once in recent history, she wasn't sure that her luck would hold out a second time, and she was pretty certain that attracting the attention of the legionaries would be a good way to fast track her second death.

After what seemed like an eternity staring in to the depths of hell, as person after person was led to their deaths, it was finally time to leave, turning their backs on the pointless, needless, death, torture, and destruction. The smell followed them for a time, the stench of death does that, but the screams, those haunted Six for hours, and even when she couldn't physically hear them any longer, they still played on repeat inside of her head.


End file.
